The last thing you want when you’re marketing your business on Twitter is someone poaching your company or brand name. It happens enough to where some users may not be sure if they are talking to the ‘real’ company / person or an impersonator. Of course, there are also some great stories of people who assume that there’s no way they are talking to the ‘real’ person only to find out that they are!

Fortunately, Twitter recently introduced a ‘Verified Account’ feature to help resolve the problem.
http://twitter.com/help/verified

It won’t completely solve the problem, but it’s a step in the right direction and demonstrates that Twitter recognizes the importance. If users can’t trust that they are talking to the genuine person or company based on the user name, they’ll find another way to connect.Verify yours! We’re heading there now…

If you haven’t heard about the race between Ashton Kutcher (@aplusk) and CNN (@cnnbrk) to 1,000,000 followers on Twitter you must have been camping in the woods for the past week. Ashton was on Oprah (@oprah) and got her to send her first tweet – how can you ignore that?!

While millions of people still don’t get it, this is a BIG deal. This has nothing to do with Ashton himself. You don’t have to be a fan of his work. It’s about a major shift in control that’s taking place. Ashton definitely gets it as he explained in his live victory broadcast last night.

“The old guard has passed and the new guard is here.. We can and will create our media… We can and will broadcast our media. We can and will censor our own media ourselves. We are over a million.”

It was a defining moment for media and the buzz and retractions have already started.

Obviously, we’re huge fans of Twitter. Watching Ashton live last night was more exciting than watching the countdown to 2000. But, as my wife likes to point out, not everyone thinks it a big deal. That’s where Mr. Kutcher’s ingenious marketing head kicked in. He knew that there must be a way he could leverage the media attention that the race was getting. What originally started as a joke could end up saving millions of lives – seriously.

That little video spawned the David vs. Goliath challenge that had us on the edge of our seats. Ashton brilliantly leveraged the attention to support a cause that is obviously important to him – ending malaria. He committed to make a donation of 10,000 nets to protect people from the disease and that started the ball rolling. Already, many high-profile folks have matched or exceeded Ashton’s donation. Oprah committed 20,000, CNN matched with 10,000 and it’s only been a few hours.

It’s safe to say that the organization Ashton is supporting, malarianomore.org, is seeing more visitors and donations than ever. The charity acted quickly to capitalize on the attention. Realizing that most of their traffic would come as a result of the Twitter news, their site has prominent tie-ins to Ashton and Twitter, they make it easy to follow and donate and they even promote Twitter profile backgrounds to help spread their message.

As a marketer, you have to appreciate it at so many levels. Here at Tweamr, we talk a lot about ‘harnessing the power of Twitter.’ Could there be a better example? Congratulations Ashton on a job extremely well done.

Press:Here, a weekly technology show airing on the Silicon Valley’s NBC affiliate, discussed the future of Twitter with their co-founder. Sarah Lacy, Jon Fortt. and Scott McGrew question Dorsey about the future of Twitter, what it will (and won’t do) to make money, and what makes Twitter unique.

Nothing specific to marketing, but Dorcey’s differentiation between ‘search’ and ‘discovery’ is one of several points that marketers will find interesting in the interview. How can you take advantage of the real-time discovery capabilities of Twitter for your business? Market research? Customer support? Lead generation?

Maybe he was writing it to intentionally get a rise out of people – to artificially inflate the comments or get the blogosphere and Twittersphere in an uproar. I sure hope so, because this article on Duct Tape Marketing couldn’t be more misleading.

The author does give in a little if you read into the article and his response to some of the comments. Sounds like he’s saying that Twitter can be a part of your marketing mix but that it shouldn’t be the first priority – especially for businesses that haven’t nailed down the basics of their positioning, messaging, etc.

Any legitimate business (and probably some illegal businesses – but we won’t go there) can benefit from Twitter. Unlike most demand generation activities, it doesn’t require any money only a little creativity and time.

While the odd restaurant or coffee shop may be grabbing some headlines because of their tweeting strategy, most small businesses have far greater pressing foundational needs when it comes to the limited time and resources they can allocate to marketing.

This is a dangerous statement. What follows is even worse. The author outlines a list of 8 items he claims you must have before you “bother with Twitter or Facebook”. While the list does cite some of the more popular tools to use, it’s far from comprehensive. The list could easily be 4-5 times as long. We’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to creative social media promotions.

No one should question that a solid marketing strategy is the appropriate starting point. However, businesses of any size that underestimate the potential short and long-term impact that Twitter will have in the marketing mix are shooting themselves in the foot, or maybe the leg.

Twitter isn’t just about pushing products, promoting brands, or driving web site traffic. Progressive companies in every industry are using Twitter to enhance their ability to conduct research, engage with prospective customers, support existing clients, engage with users to help define next generation products and more. Ad Age published this short article about using Twitter as a focus group.

The WSJ posted an article about Guy Kawasaki’s keynote presentation at Search Engine Strategies in NY. During his presentation, he called Twitter “the most powerful marketing tool that I’ve seen since probably television.” He also talks about the value of retweets and using Retweetist to monitor them (claims that he uses it as his ‘scorecard’ and checks 5-10 times a day).

This article on MediaPost written by Mark Ghuneim of Wiredset talks about the new ‘Suggested Users’, ‘Trends’ and ‘Search Now’ options and the potential impact on branding.

Zappos, Mashable (@Mashable), and Jet Blue (@JetBlue), among others, have proven that users and brands can pick up 200,000 followers, solely by being designated a “Featured User.” These brands and users are then involved in a live conversation and engagement around their brand. This demonstrates Twitter’s ability to be a driver and conduit to the consumer. It is even more impressive when you consider how far off the main page these opt-ins live.

Not sure that it’s worth the time to make Twitter part of your marketing mix? Think again.

“But we only have 1,000 followers, even if 5% click on a link, that’s only 50 visitors.”

Hold on… That’s only part of the picture – a small part – if you play your Tweets right. The real goal is to drive retweets (RTs).

This CNET article which pulls content from a post on Pingdom explains how it’s already happening.

Let’s say that just 2% of your 1,000 followers retweet your message. Assuming they have the same 1,000 followers, now your message just went out to 20,000 more tweeps. Just one more hop with the same 5% retweet ratio and 1k average followers and you’re at one million people that will see your message. Sure, some will be repeats, but even those could help increase your overall click-through rate.

50 versus 50,000

Instead of asking yourself, “How can we increase our click-through from 5% of 1,000 to 8% of 1,000?” you should be asking, “How can we get 2% of our followers to retweet and maintain an overall click-through of 5%?”

Hopefully 50,000 unique visitors isn’t going to crash your website but you get the picture. It’s not hard to imagine one more round of retweets or a slightly higher retweet ratio. Either could significantly impact your traffic. Also, remember that this can happen VERY FAST. Unlike other forms of promotion, even those with viral marketing possibilities, Tweets can catch fire and spawn a series of retweets in minutes.

By virtue of the retweet network, Twitter can be a powerful, fast-acting amplifier for information well suited to viral spread.

But it’s probably good news more than a reason to panic: although some Web sites may crash as a result, my guess is that Twitter more often will just bring Web site publishers the traffic they crave.

Want to get people retweeting for you? Learn from the best. You can use Retweetrank or other tools to find out who’s retweeted the most then check out their tweets to see why.